Title: H@CK3R
Paring: Griff (Baby Driver) X Reader
Warnings: mentions of violence, hacking, crime.
Spoilers: Some for Baby Driver
Author's Note: I was thirsting for Jon Bernthal and wrote a fic. That's it. That's what really happened. Also, requests are still closed.
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The problem with working early was that the bed was too warm. Too soft. Too snuggly. And your bedfellow? Well, he was all that and more. Your boyfriend Griffin had been a one-night stand four years ago, and when you both had tried to sneak out of the motel the next day, you found each other struggling to make a getaway with a sock half on and buttons in the wrong holes, and decided that, instead of leaving it at the best damn sex you've ever had but at want to take this to Starbucks? It's my day off. Then you just couldn't get rid of each other.
He was like the white splotches to your panda, the cream to your coffee, the accelerator to your 1992 Chevy. When you came home early after early starts, he came home late after late stars, or whenever he pleased, really, smelling of engine oil or whiskey or someone else's cigarettes. But waking up, well, that was the thing. You wanted so badly to be the small spoon to his larger one, wanted to stay so close to his chest and smell in the musk that was so Griff and trace your fingers over his tattoos until he woke up.
But you had work.
You always had work.
"I gotta get up," you moan against his chest, one of those bear-like arms tangled close to your back, keeping you near his warmth. It was so nice, and if it was on your little-to-none paid holiday days, you'd savour it, but you can't. Unless you want to be broke and snuggled up to Griff, you must greet the day. You groan when his arm grows tighter around your waist. "Griff..."
He groans back. It's a guttural noise, animal-like, ferocious. But to you, it's nothing but a kitten impersonating a lion. Griff might be built like a hurricane shelter, tattooed like bus stop, drive a battered pickup truck and swear like a sailor, but he's a sweetie.
"Griff." You repeat. "We can snuggle later. I've – I've got to get up."
He makes another noise. Then, in that handsome accent, "Do you really gotta go?"
You nod. "Yeah."
The problem with being a paid hacker was that you could really do anything you wanted. Legally? Not really. But you still did it, even without the warrant required. The man who hired you always pixelated his face when on the regular Skype, and spoke with a surprisingly All-American accent that most certainly pledged allegiance to the flag and then stole from it. Because that's what you were – the canary. Back when miners were actual people who had pickaxes and dug for lumps of coal to burn, they had a thing where they'd use a bird to make sure it was safe. That bird was you – scoping out the world from behind a shield of encrypted software and ones and zeroes and code that you could do in your sleep. You figured out the chinks in the armour of Big Pharma and those seemingly impregnable places, and exploited them for your boss to do what he would with it.
And you just did it. You weren't really morally flawed. Maybe just a teeny-tiny bit. A smidge. You still took the money from your boss, you lived from it. It's what kept you from being just like your ancestors, starved by poverty or drowned in addictions. You kept hacking, you kept getting paid. Did it make you a bad person? You didn't want to be a bad person. You helped elderly ladies make it to their cars when it was rainy and they forgot an umbrella. You let younger kids win arm wrestles with you. You knew all the lyrics to Mama Mia! The Musical! Bad people didn't sing disco.
Griff caught you like this one evening. He came home smelling like engine oil again, his undershirt splattered with traces of it, his eyebrows quizzical and questioning your still fingers at the keyboard on your laptop. He knew you could write eighty words per minute, and when you were still, it either meant there were no words to come out, or perhaps all of them were stuck somewhere, aching to be translated from brain to keyboard.
"Babe?" He asked, and placed one of your knitted shawls over your shoulders. It smelt like something used in the washing machine, but with Griff standing over you, his scent overpowered that. "Something wrong?"
You shake your head, closing the screen. "Nope," you reach up to stroke his facial hair, enjoying as Griff hummed as you carded your finger through his manicured hair. "It's probably nothing."
That night, instead of being in the crook of Griff's arm, you're positioned on the edge of the sofa arm like you only own that part of the chair, laptop perilously perched on your knees. Or rather, on a huddle of blankets and Griff's jackets that are keeping you from turning into an icicle in the night air. The screen lights your face up as you plough through malware and firewalls, flicking switches in the code before you until it gives you a green light.
I'm in, you thought to yourself.
Your boss's computer was not as well-protected as your own, and for that, you wondered how you'd never really thought of getting into the hood of his browser and looking at that secretive life lived. He had a folder of kid's pictures on the desktop, some Freddie Mercury music, an unfinished picture of a boy with earbuds in from Microsoft Paint program.
You overlooked those. Instead, you fished deeper, going for the password-protected folders (an easy entry, your software could undo it easier than Griff undid your own bra) that were full of pdfs, documentation. Your eyes dart around the titles, and you realise. They're all your files, things you've sent to him over time, all neat and tidily kept deep in his PC like archives of dirty secrets. There are files from six, seven years ago, as well as one you sent just three days ago.
"Tell me more," you whisper to the empty air.
There's no reply, unless you count the snuffle Griff makes, a snore, and a shift over the bed to the colder side of the mattress. Your side. But instead of thinking of how damn good it would be to be there beside your boyfriend, you return your attention to the screen. Closing that folder, you find one down the list titled crewmen. While the other folders are ordered by makes and models of cars, a word that doesn't fit the cypher stands out like a grey hair on a dark-haired head.
You enter the folder, and blink.
It has thirty-six jpeg files in it, all labelled by surname. You know this, because you're there, and so is Griff. The rest of the faces are unfamiliar, perhaps people you've met by off chance once in your life time, because they look bland. Unfamiliar. There's a boy with sunglasses, like the drawing you found, an African American man, a woman with a small neck tattoo, an Asian man...you could keep looking at these unfamiliar people, but your eyes drift to Griff's file.
Hesitantly, you click it. The photo is from before you met, and you only know that because there's a tattoo missing under his ear in the picture. He isn't smiling. He isn't smiling because this picture is from a mug shot. You know Griff has done some shitty things and some shady stuff too, you don't ask, but you just know. From what you can read from the jpeg, he's from Arizona, has an offshore bank account and a long middle name you've never heard him talk about.
Next, you click on your file. It has a photograph of you, swiped from a post uploaded in 2011 from a deleted Facebook account. It has your name, your address, your status with Griff, your abilities, your wants, needs, life catalogued so neatly in Times New Roman font that it makes you retch, splutter, cough. Quickly, you swipe the two files, exit the hack, and toss your laptop onto the lounge, aghast.
You've found your answer.
When you tell Griff what you did that night, he's silent. When his burner phone goes off, he doesn't answer it. He's just sitting there, looking at the files you've grabbed a hold of, lightly scowling at the picture of himself from years ago on your screen. You're silent too. Sometimes, there doesn't have to be words to say things. Sometimes, the silence speaks for itself.
"You work for Doc too?" He asks after a while.
You shake your head. "I don't know who I work for." You admit. "He's very American, and we never see face-to-face. But he always wears a suit on Skype."
Griff nods. "That's Doc."
You shiver. It can't be coincidence that you're both lovers who work for the same man. You're no criminal, but from what you read, you see that Griff is, and constantly is. He's the muscle, the intimidator, the man with a gun who tells you Shut up and give me the money! You can't imagine Griff like that. He's not like that with you. He's got the words sand and wich tattooed on his knuckles (that was after a few too many drinks one night), and when it's stormy outside he turns off his phone and keeps you close to him because he knows how much you hate thunder. But it says he's killed people. Did it make him a bad person? You didn't want him to be a bad person.
"I want to run away," you whisper to thin air. "I can't be responsible for this anymore."
Griff types one finger at a time into incognito mode on Google Chrome, spelling out M-E-X-I-C-O. You shake your head. He deletes those letters, and types out, C-A-N-A-D-A. You don't shake your head. Griff smiles, and while you flop backward in the chair, defeated at life and existence itself, his burner phone rings.
"Is that –,"
He nods. "It's always Doc." You swallow, watching as he flipped the archaic little phone open, holding it to his ear. You can't hear the words on the other end, not with a speaker that's straight out of 2003, but you get the gist of it from the way Griff's mouth is twisting. At last, he snaps the phone shut, and a breath escapes your lungs. "Another job."
You remember submitting a text file two days ago. It's the last file you've sent, and while you're sure he has a backup for you in case you go AWOL (like you're planning to do), it's the thought that counts. The last of your taint on the world around Atlanta.
"After...?"
You don't need to finish. He nods. "After."
When Griff comes home the night after the last heist, he's gotten rid of his precious pickup truck and traded it in for an old 1970 Camaro. You raise your eyebrows at the muscle car, but remembering your boyfriend looks like a fiend and totally the type to not blink at in a jaded gem like a Camaro, you keep quiet. Everything in the apartment you can't take with you has been methodically put into moving boxes stuffed with firelighters and newspaper, and with the sprinkler fire alarms on a well-paced timer, there's sure to be enough damage there to erase all trace of you two existing in that apartment. There's no way for sure you're getting the bond back.
When you toss your bag in the back of the car, you jog up to the apartment, lighter in hand. But before you make the place go up in flames, you see you've left your laptop on the table. You know Griff is waiting on the street, and time is precious, but still, you log on, and open Skype messenger.
Screw you, Doc you type.
You flick the lighter, and light the wick leading to the boxes, leaving your laptop open, the screen to be soon burned to a crisp, hard drive fried as you and Griff leave your lives as criminals to become someone adjacent to that noun. You decided then and there, as you both hit the interstate that it didn't make you bad people to bad things. Just people.